berlin future forum

About the BFF

The Berlin Future Forum (BFF) provides a generative field of creative dialogue for new thoughts and ideas to emerge. BFF is an effective innovation platform for transdisciplinary dialogues and discussions concerning the profound transformations that humanity is experiencing in the beginning of the 21st century and the newly emerging possibilities for creating a new kind of civilization.

Actualization of a new possibility requires a new approach and a new method that is not of the past or the present but of and from the future. BFF is an exploratory experiment in the development and execution of such a new approach and method in the actualization of the emerging new possibilities.

The Berlin Future Forum was initiated in 2015 as the brainchild of two principals: Rafael Steinhauser, corporate CEO, social engineer, and professional actor; Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, philosopher, systems theorist, and corporate consultant.

Berlin has been chosen as the initial location because the city is known as a preeminent creative-hub of the world and stands as an inspirational symbolic locus for people who are exploring creative original paths in pursuit of their vision.

The Context

The evolutionary process of the universe is characterized by the principle of synergy—that the behavioral characteristics of the whole system in evolution cannot be predicted from the most complete knowledge of the components taken separately or in partial combinations.

Many argue that the world has entered a revolutionary phase-transition in history even greater than the Industrial Revolution. In accordance with the principle of synergy, however, even with much greater knowledge than any that was available in the past, not a single expert can predict, with certainty, how the world as a whole will be like in the future.

Fortunately, however, we humans are not only mere observers but also are conscious participants and co-creators of the world. We have within us the power to transform and re-create the world.

The world consists of a synergetic network of communication that is continuously forming, reforming, and transforming. The substance of the world is idea, which forms, reforms, and transforms itself inside the network of communication, autopoietically self-organizing as an evolving system.

The prime mover of the world is not technology but idea. Technology is only an artifact of idea, but never the prime mover itself. Idea moves and ideation creates the world. Therefore, we can move the world with our own thinking through the generation of new ideas.

In this context of idea as the prime mover of the world, we can see that innovative technologies that have emerged at the beginning of the 21st century—such as social platforms, the cloud, and the Internet of Things—have deep transformational power.

Combined with the explosion of mobility as well as with the universal access to the broadband Internet, the transformative power of these technologies reaches almost all aspects of human life, such as communications, information, production, consumption, and entertainment, challenging entire industry segments and affecting our economic and political lives in ways unpredicted and unpredictable.

Concomitantly, with the advent of millennial generations endowed with new kinds of mentality and intelligence, humanity has entered a new phase in the evolution of consciousness where two complementary trends are discernible—greater individual differentiation and higher communal integration.

Consequently, both individualism and collectivism, and their never-ending conflict and strife, can now be transcended to usher in a world where individual freedom and societal unity can simultaneously be achieved.

These profound changes open a unique window of opportunities in many aspects of our lives that raise questions of how to unleash, shape, and lead those new pathways from ego-centric concern to eco-centric coherence; from material and spiritual paucity to plenitude; from local-centered action to transcultural global engagement throughout the entire fields of the arts, the sciences, the business industries, education, economics, ecology, and social architectonics—in order to bring about a more regenerative world and planet.

The evolutionary process of the universe is characterized by the principle of synergy—that the behavioral characteristics of the whole system in evolution cannot be predicted from the most complete knowledge of the components taken separately or in partial combinations.

Many argue that the world has entered a revolutionary phase-transition in history even greater than the Industrial Revolution. In accordance with the principle of synergy, however, even with much greater knowledge than any that was available in the past, not a single expert can predict, with certainty, how the world as a whole will be like in the future.

Fortunately, however, we humans are not only mere observers but also are conscious participants and co-creators of the world. We have within us the power to transform and re-create the world.

The world consists of a synergetic network of communication that is continuously forming, reforming, and transforming. The substance of the world is idea, which forms, reforms, and transforms itself inside the network of communication, autopoietically self-organizing as an evolving system.

The prime mover of the world is not technology but idea. Technology is only an artifact of idea, but never the prime mover itself. Idea moves and ideation creates the world. Therefore, we can move the world with our own thinking through the generation of new ideas.

In this context of idea as the prime mover of the world, we can see that innovative technologies that have emerged at the beginning of the 21st century—such as social platforms, the cloud, and the Internet of Things—have deep transformational power.

Combined with the explosion of mobility as well as with the universal access to the broadband Internet, the transformative power of these technologies reaches almost all aspects of human life, such as communications, information, production, consumption, and entertainment, challenging entire industry segments and affecting our economic and political lives in ways unpredicted and unpredictable.

Concomitantly, with the advent of millennial generations endowed with new kinds of mentality and intelligence, humanity has entered a new phase in the evolution of consciousness where two complementary trends are discernible—greater individual differentiation and higher communal integration.

Consequently, both individualism and collectivism, and their never-ending conflict and strife, can now be transcended to usher in a world where individual freedom and societal unity can simultaneously be achieved.

These profound changes open a unique window of opportunities in many aspects of our lives that raise questions of how to unleash, shape, and lead those new pathways from ego-centric concern to eco-centric coherence; from material and spiritual paucity to plenitude; from local-centered action to transcultural global engagement throughout the entire fields of the arts, the sciences, the business industries, education, economics, ecology, and social architectonics—in order to bring about a more regenerative world and planet.